The colour of money.

In a country that is obsessed with anything that is fair, fair as in appearance and not so obsessed with anything that is fair, fair as in reasonable, the newfound love for something black perplexed me, but at the same time encouraged me to delve deep into my understanding of the colour of money. Yes, the pursuit of black money hoarded across the shores was brought to light accompanied by huge media frenzy and political brouhaha over the last couple of weeks. Political parties had promised to bring this back as part of their election manifestos. One of the media houses went to the extent of claiming that they had beaten the rest by a clean 2 hours in being the first to track, expose and reveal the ‘black’ money hoarders. It was one of those rare moments when something that was black was in the limelight in India.

My understanding of economics was slightly skewed as a child, I always thought the rich had white money, the poor had black money and the middle class had brown money. Now, that was some 'classification of my understanding of the monetary policies around me. The rich always flaunted nice, crisp and fresh notes / wads of currency that were thick enough and could be held together with a rubber band and were stored in suitcases and safes. The poor had crumpled, soiled, hand me down currency where even the promissory clause ‘I promise to pay the bearer the sum of rupees…’ had vanished and was often secured in their sweaty palms. The middle class as the name suggests found itself in the middle of things receiving white money from the rich in lesser thickness and stored it in wallets or shirt pockets which turned grey as they were holding on to it far too long before changing it and then handing over the left overs in a darker shade of grey to the poor which ultimately turned black in their possession. I thought this was in line with social order of things I was taught to believe as a child.

Well, growing up, I was even more confused as I started to read that black money was stored in the pristine white snow clad regions of Switzerland. What an irony I thought, a country draped in white hosted black money. This, I call the yin and yang of Indian economy. I realized that darker the shade of black the money had, the more colorful use it was put to, for example the colorful song and dance sequences of Bollywood shot in scenic locales of Swiss Alps or the busy Times Square was claimed to be funded by black money. The colorfully lit skylines that sprang up in most metropolitan cities were supposedly funded by black money. Certain self-gratifying activities engaged in red shaded regions of a city were also occasionally funded by Black money. Basically these were all easy prey to be funded by unaccounted, untaxed money.

While I appreciate the efforts taken by the Indian authorities to bring unaccounted money back to India, I am against giving a colour to this currency. Colour classification has always spelt doom to our society and the Indian public has been quick at lapping it up, be it a fairness cream or a darker shade for the color of money.